Working for Mardi Gras, Greer urged Crist to fire gambling regulator

From Dara Kam of the News Service of Florida:

Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman
Jim Greer, on the payroll of a South Florida
dog track, tried to get a gambling regulator fired two days before the veteran
state worker was forced to resign, according to court records obtained by The
News Service of Florida.

Greer is now serving an 18-month sentence in federal prison after pleading
guilty to money laundering and theft in connection with a scheme in which he
created a company and then steered party business to it.

But while Greer --- hand-picked by former Gov. Charlie Crist to head the state
GOP ---was party chairman in 2009, he was also working for the owners of the
Mardi Gras Casino in Broward County, getting paid $7,500 a month as a
consultant for entertainment and hospitality regulatory issues.

Four years later, gambling operators are still jockeying over lucrative
pari-mutuel permits even as the Legislature explores how much --- and what
types of --- gambling the state should allow.

A case involving the quest for a quarter-horse permit near Homestead,
which could open the door for more slot machines in South
Florida, demonstrates a tangled web of the relationships between
gambling lobbyists, regulators and politicians.

The company Greer was working for was one of the ‘three loudest voices’
opposing South Florida quarter-horse permits,
according to Florida Administrative Law Judge R. Bruce McKibben.

McKibben in an Aug. 6 recommended order said the Department of Business and
Professional Regulation didn’t do anything wrong by denying a permit to Ft.
Myers Real Estate Holdings, a company trying to get the permit for the venue in
Florida City,
near Homestead.
The permit, if issued, would allow a card room and possibly slot machines. Marc
Dunbar, a lawyer who represented the Ft.
Myers group, said it
plans to appeal McKibben's ruling.

But the court documents and interviews with the players reveal a marked shift
in the state’s handling of permits after Chuck Drago, Greer’s close friend and
godfather of his oldest son, became secretary of the agency and after long-time
DBPR Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering Director Dave Roberts was ousted.

Within a week after Greer demanded that Roberts be fired, Drago ordered Ross to
terminate the regulator, Ross testified in the case.

Drago denies being asked by Greer to get rid of Roberts, targeted by South Florida tracks angry over the quarter- horse
permits and other issues.

“Nobody asked me to have Dave Roberts leave. That never happened,” Drago said.

But Delmar Johnson, former executive director of the RPOF under Greer, said his
old boss had ‘unfettered access’ to Drago, who served as police chief in Oviedo while Greer was a
city commissioner prior to becoming the GOP chairman. Greer also had access to
Crist and his top two aides.

On July 14, 2009, Greer and Johnson met with Ross --- Johnson’s fraternity
brother --- at Po’ Boys, a bistro close to RPOF headquarters in downtown Tallahassee frequented by
Greer and his gang.

After the lunch, Greer took Ross aside and directed him to ‘fire your
pari-mutuel director,’ Ross told The News Service of Florida.

Ross, who had been on the job less than two months, said he refused. But Greer
insisted, saying, ‘I’ve heard really bad things about him and he needs to go,’
according to Ross.

Ross said he had no idea Greer, who never registered as a lobbyist for Hartman
and Tyner, Mardi Gras' owner, was working for the dog track and slots venue at
the time.

“Do I have an idea now why that ask was made’ I can connect the dots,” said
Ross, a lobbyist and gambling lawyer who worked for Las Vegas Sands before
being hired by Drago in 2009. His client roster now includes Las Vegas Sands,
one of several gambling operators trying to convince Florida
lawmakers to approve ‘destination resort’ casino-style gambling in South Florida.

Johnson also said he didn’t know that his boss had a side job as a Mardi Gras
consultant when he arranged the lunch with Ross at Greer’s request.

Greer had to meet Scott. We had to go to lunch. Scott had to be there, and I
had to get Scott there and he wouldn’t say why, Johnson, now an AFLAC insurance
agent, said in a telephone interview.

Hartman and Tyner Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Dan Adkins said he
hired Greer as a consultant for a constitutional amendment that would have
lowered the tax rate on slot machines. That plan was dropped after lawmakers
reduced the tax rate in legislation dealing with a compact with the Seminole
Tribe of Florida.

Adkins said he never asked Greer to lobby for him and didn’t seek to get
Roberts fired.

"Absolutely not. I had very little communication with Jim Greer during
that whole time. He was on retainer strictly for the issue of running the
constitutional amendment," Adkins said. ‘It’s just nonsense. Sorry. But
the people playing the bad games here are Dunbar and Romanik.’

Dunbar has represented the Ft. Myers group, and David Romanik is a principal of and
attorney for Ft. Myers Real Estate Holdings Inc. Romanik and Dunbar are both
affiliated with Gulfstream Park Casino in Broward
County and are both part-owners of a
controversial track in the north Florida
community of Gretna.
The pair is frequently at odds with other South Florida
pari-mutuels.

Greer’s lawyer Damon Chase claims Greer got his orders from Crist, who is now a
Democrat and is expected to announce a bid for governor in October.

‘Suffice it to say, Mr. Greer served at the pleasure of Charlie Crist during
that time. Mr. Greer was steadfastly loyal to Charlie Crist and always followed
instructions consistent with Mr. Crist’s agenda. Any involvement Mr. Greer
would have had in this story would have been at Charlie Crist’s express
direction,’ Chase said in an e-mail.

Crist did not return calls seeking comment.

Drago, who left his post as DBPR secretary in November 2009 and went to work as
Crist’s deputy chief of staff, said the former governor never pressured him
about the quarter-horse issue.

‘I never got direction that I can ever recall from the governor’s office one
way or the other. The only concern was that they were kept in the loop as to
what we decided. I never got any direction and I never even got a sense from
the governor’s office that they wanted me to do anything particular,’ Drago
said.

Roberts left the agency the day after he inadvertently released documents to a
lawyer for Mardi Gras, a competitor of Gulfstream, related to an investigation
into a ring of Gulfstream workers who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars
from slot machines using free play cards.

DBPR officials at the time said that the public records fiasco had nothing to
do with Roberts’ departure. Roberts now works as a lobbyist for Magic City
Casino, the former Flagler Dog Track in Miami-Dade County.

But the depositions and testimony in the case show that the governor’s office
was keenly interested in the quarter-horse permits.

For two years, Crist’s administration had been negotiating a deal with the
Seminole Tribe of Florida to allow the tribe to operate slots. Lawmakers
refused to go along with the first compact Crist signed with the tribe in 2007
and, in 2009, the Legislature was preparing to pass a bill approving the
agreement, ultimately authorized in 2010. In 2004, voters approved slot
machines in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, opening the door for slots on
tribal lands.

Between September 2008 and February 2010, the agency issued nine quarter-horse
permits, including five approved by Roberts. Races have been run at two of the
facilities --- Gretna and Hialeah.

Three weeks after Roberts was forced to resign, Drago, Ross and the agency’s
chief gambling lawyer, Joe Helton, met with representatives of Calder Race
Course, Flagler Dog Track and Mardi Gras at Calder in Miami. Calder lobbyist Wilbur Brewton
organized the meeting where the group aired concerns about the quarter-horse
permits and suggested ways the agency could halt or at least slow them down.

The permits hadn’t resulted in licensed activities and thus weren’t bringing
any taxes and fees to the state, the quarter-horse opponents pointed out.

State law imposed a restriction on other types of gambling permits, barring new
facilities from opening within 100 miles of an existing track. But a loophole
in the law did not include the mileage restriction for quarter-horse permits.
The Legislature was expected to include the 100-mile restriction in a bill
authorizing the compact with the Seminoles.

The South Florida tracks also believed that
Roberts’s interpretation of the law relating to zoning requirements was too
slack and complained to him about it, according to McKibben’s Aug. 6 order.

Gambling attorney John Lockwood told the court that ‘the special interests
wanted Roberts terminated, because they were concerned with the quarter-horse
application review process,’ McKibben wrote.

Under ‘The Roberts Regime,’ McKibben wrote, the agency would accept a letter
from a land-use lawyer saying that zoning for the proposed location ‘was
obtainable’ from local authorities.

Lawyers for the quarter-horse opponents urged a stricter interpretation of the
law that would require prior zoning approval before a permit could be issued.

After Roberts left, the agency adopted the proposed zoning requirements when
considering the permits. DBPR officially rejected the Ft. Myers
group’s permit in January, 2010, almost a year to the day after the application
was first submitted.

Dunbar blamed Crist’s inner circle for the
switch.

In the court filings, Dunbar and Romanik accused DBPR of stalling the Florida City permit until the 100-mile
restriction went into effect, making approval unobtainable. After denying the
permit, the agency refused to grant an administrative hearing on the issue.
Romanik sued, and the 1st District Court of Appeal agreed that DBPR should have
granted the hearing. The appeals court also ordered DBPR to pay nearly $80,000
in legal fees to the Ft.
Myers group.

Ross said Dunbar is making ‘wide-ranging accusations
of a conspiracy when there wasn’t one’ because he disagrees with the different
interpretation of the law.

‘Nobody’s denying there was a philosophical change in how these were handled,’
Ross said. ‘The interpretation was wrong. That’s why there was a policy change.
You can see that the interpretation was wrong because to this day only one of
them with the exception of Hialeah
which has had a facility for decades is operational.’